Wednesday, July 20, 2011

I showed up, played, and died.

And it was a lot of fun.

Tim recounts much of the session here. Tim did a great job refereeing, and Dwayne expertly used the full capabilities of his character.

Looking from the outside lead up and the encounter itself were incredibly interesting, but trying to figure out the best choices for Paltar was an exercise in frustration that night. For me, the best choices means not trying to figure out what I would do, but what would my character. The thing that I like the most in playing tabletop (as opposed to refereeing) is being the character I am playing while at the table. Some of my frustration stems from the fact that Paltar was clearly in a situation beyond anything he trained or prepared for.

But it not Tim's fault that it happen. Sure he the referee, sure he wrote the encounter, downloaded that cool picture, etc, etc. Why it isn't Tim fault? Because it was my choices that resulted Paltar being in that situation.

There were several opportunities for a different set of circumstances to play out. I could have headed back to City-State instead of sending Lazarus. Despite the bum arm from the previous' week undead attack, I figured I was better choice because I had a large shield and could defend Cal, our mage, better. Lazarus was a sword and buckler fighter.

I didn't have to go into the woods to lure the thing out. But I did and that was that. My only regret that I wish I could have hung on for one more round so I could have Create Fire it's ass while we were in a Very High Mana zone.

In the end Paltar died a heroic death, and now I got to come up with a new character. I am thinking about playing either a Tharian HorseLord, a Cleric of Sarrath (Set), or a Myrmidon of Sarrath (Set).

The way we play clerical magic with GURPS is using the Unlimited Mana system out of GURPS Thaumatology. The upside of unlimited mana is that you don't spend fatigue for spells, just cast and it is done. However the fatigue that would have been spent get added to a tally. If your tally crosses a threshold, then "bad things" happen. I.e. you get to roll on the calamity table. Where results ranges from you getting a tail, to permanently destroying the mana in a region

With our variant your tally get reduced only by performing acts of piety. Daily prayer restores a small amount, more import acts of faith reduce the tally by larger amounts. It is a nice contrast to the standard GURPS Magic system. I detail the variant here.

So tonight I am going sit down with GURPS Character Assistant and see what I get for 120 point.

Nice post, Rob. Good character deaths become some of the best game table legends, along with those critical misses, and improbable victories. Giant dam-building rodents running amuck also tend to make the story circuit.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.